Zhou Enlai

Date of Birth:

8 January 1898 Huaiyin, Jiangsu, China

Biography:

En-lai Chou (Enlai Zhou) is widly recognized as the most most influential diplomat in the history of Communist China, but less commonly known as the right-hand man Mao Zedong. En-lai Chou was born in rural Hwaian, China in 1898, the exact date is unknown. The son of an imperial government bureaucrat, Chou was disillusioned by the Manchu court's concessions to the West and became a militant nationalist. He joined the Socialist movement in 1917 while he was a student studying in Japan. Two years later, upo... more

En-lai Chou (Enlai Zhou) is widly recognized as the most most influential diplomat in the history of Communist China, but less commonly known as the right-hand man Mao Zedong. En-lai Chou was born in rural Hwaian, China in 1898, the exact date is unknown. The son of an imperial government bureaucrat, Chou was disillusioned by the Manchu court's concessions to the West and became a militant nationalist. He joined the Socialist movement in 1917 while he was a student studying in Japan. Two years later, upon his return to China, Chou was arrested for being a leftist agitator. Upon his release in 1920, Chou fled to France, where he became an active corresponding member of the newly founded Communist Party. After finishing his Marxist studies, Chou went back to China in 1922 to join Sun Yat-sen, then cooperating with the Communists. In 1924, he taught at Whampoa Military Academy, which was then under Communist control. In 1927, two years after Sun's death, fighting broke out between the Communist rebels and the Nationalist troops loyal to Chiang in Shanghai. During that time, Chou became one of the top commanders of the Chinese People's Red Army and by 1931 he became second-in-command with the rank of general along side Mao Zedong. Chou played a key part in the rebel Red Army's survival and was in the Long March in 1934 of Mao's rebels across China. In 1937, after Japan invaded China from occupied Manchuria, Chou negotiated a truce between the warring Chinese armies to combat the Japanese. Throught the Second World War in China (1937-1945) Chou served as the Communists' chief liasion with Chiang Kai-shek, an assignment that signaled his transition from field commander to diplomat. As a result of his new role, Chou helped plan the overall strategy during the second civil war that broke out once again between the Communists and Nationalists after the defeat of Japan in late 1945, but he personally did not lead troops into combat again for it was now solely Mao's job. Following the Communist victory which formed the People's Republic of China in 1949, Chou was named premier and foreign minister. During his long political career, Chou played an important role in the negoations that ended the Korean War (1950-1953) which China sent troops to fight alongside the Communist North Korean army, as well as the French war in Indochina (1946-1954), the U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960's, and the normalization of relations with the USA in 1972. En-lai Chou died while in office in Peking (Bejing) from cancer on January 8, 1976 at the age of 77 or 78, second only to Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in the Communist hierarchy, who ironically later died in September that same year.